Did the LA Times decline to endorse Kamala Harris because of her support for Israel?
The call was made by the newspaper’s owner, whose daughter is a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights
Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Nov. 7, 2022, in Los Angeles. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images
By Sharon Rosen Leib October 25, 2024
The daughter of the owner of the Los Angeles Times, who has been outspoken accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, said Friday she was glad her father had blocked the newspaper from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is not a vote for Donald Trump,” she wrote. “This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children. I’m proud of the LA Times’ decision just as I am certain there is no such thing as children of darkness. There is no such thing as human animals.”
This is not a vote for Donald Trump. This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children. I’m proud of the LA Times’ decision just as I am certain there is no such thing as children of darkness. There is no such thing as human animals.
— Nika Soon-Shiong 🇵🇸 (@nikasoonshiong) October 25, 2024
The Times has endorsed a Democrat for president in every general election since 2008, including in 2020, when Harris ran as President Joe Biden’s running mate. Its owner’s veto of the Harris endorsement its editorial board had planned prompted the resignation of Mariel Garza, its editorials editor, and two editorial writers. It sent shock waves through Democratic circles and incensed staffers and readers who accused the newspaper’s owner of compromising the independence of the editorial board, which had drafted a Harris endorsement — Garza said — as the logical culmination of a series of editorials on the dangers of a second Trump administration.
Trump’s campaign jumped on the news, broken by Semafor on Tuesday, sending out a statement that called it a “humiliating blow” and said it showed Harris’ “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.”
“Numerous staffers have told me about how pained, even embarrassed, they felt after Trump used the Times to score a political point,” Sewell, the newspaper’s former editorial page editor, wrote Wednesday in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Some have speculated that Soon-Shiong, a surgeon who became a billionaire after selling his pharmaceutical companies, blocked the endorsement in an attempt to appease Trump, who is running neck-and-neck with her. Stat, which covers healthcare news, reported that Soon-Shiong met twice with Trump in early 2017 in hopes of landing a senior role in his administration.
This week Soon-Shiong told Spectrum News that he didn’t want to endorse any candidate because “it would just add to the division” in the nation. He added, “I don’t know how (readers) look upon me or our family as ‘ultra progressive’ or not, but I’m an Independent.”
Vice President Harris, who was also endorsed by the Times during her successful campaign for U.S. Senate, has a strong voting record of support for Israel. Though she has empathized with Palestinians suffering in the Israel-Hamas war, she has also failed to secure the endorsement of a movement that urged voters in Democratic primaries this year to vote “uncommitted” to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel.
Nika Soon-Shiong
Nika Soon-Shiong, 31, a Stanford University graduate and doctoral student at the University of Oxford, has long advocated publicly for several causes, including Palestinian rights, and founded a group that supports a guaranteed income for poor Americans. On her X account, to which she has pinned a Palestinian flag, she has accused Israel of genocide and urged journalists to describe Israel as an apartheid state. She has followed and “liked” posts from the Quds News Network, a news agency affiliated with Hamas.
She has been scrutinized since her father bought the 144-year-old newspaper, California’s largest, and the San Diego Union Tribune for $500 million in 2018. An unflattering 2022 profile in Los Angeles Magazine criticized her “outsized influence” at the newspaper and called her “the Ivanka of the Los Angeles Times.”
“My immediate thought after reading about the Times decision was that Nika was involved,” said Paul Koretz, a Democrat, former mayor of West Hollywood and member of the Los Angeles City Council for 13 years. “The Times had no other reason not to endorse Harris except for the influence of people that strongly side with the Palestinians post-Oct. 7.”
Nearly 2,000 Times‘ readers cancelled their subscriptions this week, according to The Guardian. (The paper has roughly half a million subscribers.) Many celebrities, some of them Jewish, announced their cancellations on X.
“Just canceled my subscription @latimes,” wrote Randi Mayem Singer, the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire, on X. “WTF is wrong with you?”
“I just canceled my subscription,” wrote actor Evan Handler. “I don’t need to spend $15.96/month to read only what Patrick Soon-Shiong allows the paper’s staff to publish.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the Los Angeles Times had endorsed Kamala Harris for state attorney general. While it endorsed her for U.S. Senate, it did not endorse her for attorney general.
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